Month: March 2022

Loss Prevention

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★★★½
“Missing this would be your loss”

After a series of recent films which… well, let’s just say, left a little to be desired, it was a real palate-cleansing pleasure to encounter this. Oh, make no mistake: this is no classic. But, considering the budget was supposedly under $20,000, this operates within its limitations very nicely. The makers sticks to what they can do, and what it does, it does more than adequately. In particular, the movie is populated with a good number of interesting characters, that are fun to watch. The central one is Nik (Uhl), a young woman who dropped out of college and is now scraping by, working behind the bar at The Soggy Weasel, the pub belonging to her father (former wrestler Snow).

However, her slackerish lifestyle is rudely interrupted when one patron drinks too much, and has to be separated from his keys. Unfortunately, the key-chain also holds a flash drive of industrial espionage data, which he was supposed to hand over to Boland (Wells), the operative of a rival company. Boland is unimpressed, and will go to any lengths to retrieve it, providing the bottom line is deemed sufficiently profitable. Fortunately for Nik, also on hand is Brooke (Albert), a thoroughly competent operative of the company who is the data’s rightful owner, and she takes on the defense of Nik and her father. Not that Nik is averse to getting her own hands dirty, as things turn out.

It does take a little while for things to kick off, as we get introduced to the characters. Nik is more than slightly sarcastic, so can only be respected as such, and also a thoroughly unrepentant lesbian – both combine in an entirely unrepeatable comment about breath mints. But Hollywood could learn a lot about depicting sexual identity from this, which makes absolutely no attempt at moral posturing in this area. Instead, it’s far too busy providing a fast-paced gallop around the city of Louisville, ending up in Brooke and Nik mounting an assault on the headquarters where Boland is holding her father hostage. Yet there’s a twist or two to come, with things not quite ending in the massive firefight you’d expect – another way in which this manages to confound expectations.

In its depiction of corporate warfare, this is rather sophisticated for a low-budget action flick. In particular, Boland’s actions are entirely determined by an accounting of the expected profits and loss. For instance, is it cheaper to buy someone off, or kill them, with all the resulting collateral expenses? It absolutely is not personal with him, just a question of what will balance the books most profitably. The same is true, to a slightly lesser degree, for Brooke – if I heard a late line of dialogue correctly, her surname in the film is Shields! This is an approach which plays into the unexpected finale, when Nik comes up with a solution which satisfies everybody. Well, almost everybody… This has not one, but two, action heroines who are fun to watch, and was considerably better than I expected

Dir: Brian Cunningham, Matt Niehoff
Star: Abisha Uhl, Al Snow, John Wells, Lauren Albert

Suga Babies

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★½
“The drugs do work”

As usual, I begin with the normal disclaimer, that I’m about as far from the target audience as you could imagine. For this is an inner-city story about a drug war between three rival gangs in South Carolina: the Guardians, the Dynasty and the GeeChees. That said, however, there have been other films, with not dissimilar themes, which I have enjoyed. Most obviously, I am not the target audience for Pam Grier’s seventies output either. But those still kick ass. Even among the modern entries, there have been ones like Candy, which have felt authentic in their depiction of urban life. This, on the other hand, feels more like a no-budget hip-hop video.

About the main positive is that nobody makes a particular fuss about the Guardians being an all-girl gang, under the loose leadership of Naomi (Mott). They’re just part of the landscape, and everyone accepts that. The cause of the war is a new drug called sugar. In an odd twist, this actually makes people who take it better. We are told it literally cures cancer. I genuinely LOL’d at that. However, the interest of the authorities is limited to a spokesman for Big Pharma, who expresses concern at the street muscling in on “their” turf. It might have been interesting if it turned out Big Pharma had secretly released the drug to the GeeChees for distribution, as a test of its effectiveness. Sadly, not much is done with the concept, with this largely being an excuse for more black-on-black crime.

Indeed, that social crisis is expressly referenced during one of the multiple sequences of “The Buzz”, some chat-show. These really add very little, and the same goes for the supposed “courtroom” scenes. As well as being woefully unconvincing, I don’t think I ever worked out quite who was on trial, or for what. It’s all horribly disjointed, for example a lengthy scene that’s just multiple people picking up drugs from a motel room. Add in sequences which genuinely are no-budget music videos, and the dramatic pickings became painfully thin. There’s just one scene that has any impact. Mouse (McCoy) gets picked up by the Guardians and is found to be dealing sugar for the GeeChees. Her impassioned explanation that she did so because sugar helped her family, is certainly the movie’s emotional high-point.

According to the IMDb, the director had made eight feature films since her first in 2020. That’s an admirable work ethic, to be sure. But I can’t help thinking that churning out fewer movies might lead to an increase in their quality, because this definitely feels rushed, in almost every aspect. Maybe this is what the target audience wants? But it would be patronizing to believe their standards can be satisfied with this kind of thing. On the other hand, this wasn’t even the worst thing I watched today (hello, Battered), at least reaching a bare minimum of technical competence. However, that’s scant praise for any movie.

Dir: Felicia Rivers
Star: Diamond Mott, Patrice Jennings, Shakeela Koffey Scott, Samantha McCoy

Wentworth

  By

★★★★
“Sheilas behind bars.”

Back in the eighties, there was an Australian women-in-prison soap opera called Prisoner Cell Block H. [It was called Prisoner on its home turf, but was renamed in the UK and US, to avoid confusion with The Prisoner] It ran for eight seasons, totalling 692 (!) episodes, and achieved a fair bit of cult status, mostly through late-night screenings on TV. Much of its reputation was based on “so bad it’s good” elements, such as the wobbly sets; a review calls it, “one of the most bizarre, violent, lesbian-fetishy-heart-warming dramas ever created.” The show concluded its run in 1986, but was never forgotten.

More than 25 years later, the concept was rebooted in 2013 as Wentworth, and enjoyed a renaissance. While also running for eight seasons, rather than trash (not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you!), this version proved to be remarkably well made. It likely helped that the remake’s production schedule here was rather less frantic, ending at exactly 100 episodes last October. The show is currently ranked by the IMDb in the top 250 TV series of all time, and was sold to over 90 countries, achieving a worldwide audience, thanks in part to its distribution on streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

It spawned local remakes in a number of countries. The Dutch was the most successful, running for four seasons, but Belgium, Germany and Turkey also took the show and recreated it. [Here is as good a place as any to mention that back in 1982, there was a male spin-off of the original show called Punishment. Though it lasted only one season, the cast included some guy called Mel Gibson…] Indeed, the Turkish one, known on Netflix as The Yard, was reviewed here in August 2020. That review began, “I really must get round to reviewing Wentworth.” And eighteen months later, here we are…

It’s a show I’ve thought about covering on a number of occasions over its run, but now that it’s finished, I feel I can finally do it justice. I definitely can’t argue with the acclaim it has received. For Wentworth features a slew of extremely strong female characters, including one of the most memorable villainesses in TV history, and maintained a high degree of dramatic quality from beginning to end. That’s rare for a series; even classics like Buffy dropped off after a certain point, with commercial motivations typically surpassing artistic ones. Not so here, with the eighth series virtually as strong as the first.

One element, which it does share with its predecessor, is that the setting is the “star”, rather than any performer. I think this certainly helped contribute to its longevity, and sustained the show’s freshness. If one of the actresses began to feel jaded, and wanted out, their character could be replaced by another. The prison scenario meant there were always new arrivals potentially coming in, and scope for departures too, without excessively disrupting the overall structure. If you look at many of the ultra-long running shows, e.g. Dr Who or the many incarnations of Law and Order, they have a similar ability to rotate their cast seamlessly.

Not to say there weren’t main characters – many of them with the names and/or backgrounds as their “ancestors” in Cell Block H. But they tended to have arcs across three or four years; few lasted the full eight, mostly on the guard side. This timeframes was long enough to allow for fulfilling development, without getting stale. The first such was Bea Smith (Cormack), who arrives at Wentworth after attempting to murder her husband, following years of abuse. She becomes involved in the struggle for “Top Dog” status – the role of the most powerful prisoner – between two existing inmates, only to end up becoming Top Dog herself. However, it’s a lonely position, where you always have to watch your back, and allies can suddenly become enemies.

One such was the character mentioned above: Joan Ferguson (Rabe), known as ‘The Freak’ (left). She joined the show as the new governor of Wentworth in season 2, and was, to be blunt, a clinical psychopath, devoid of empathy and incredibly manipulative. She was also very smart, a lethal combination. However, it’s not enough to save her from ending up a prisoner in the jail herself. The first episode of season 5, where Ferguson is released into the general population was, for me, peak Wentworth, and one of the best 45 minutes of television I’ve seen, in any genre.

Remarkably, she didn’t just survive this reversal of fortune, but thrived. She took over as Top Dog. until an escape plan misfired, ending in her being buried alive by long-serving prison officer Will Jackson (Robbie Magasiva)). But you can’t keep a good villainess down, though it appeared the trauma led to amnesia, with Ferguson subsequently using a different name and with a completely different personality. Was this genuine, or another of her ruses? I couldn’t possibly reveal that. What I will do though, is laud a glorious performance by Rabe, who at six feet tall, has a remarkable physical presence, backed up by ferocious intensity. She’s Cersei Lannister on steroids. And without the incest.

In general, it’s perhaps less exploitative than you might expect, with nudity only when genuinely necessary to the plot, rather than for titillation purposes. On the other hand, the show does not soft-pedal the brutality of prison life, with violence and death a common occurrence. Inmates tend to handle their own infractions internally, the Top Dog having the ability to impose punishments for theft, deceit or, perhaps the worst offense of all, “lagging” i.e. talking to prison authorities. It would definitely be rated a hard R, purely for its authentically no-holds barred language. Boy, do the Aussies love themselves a good c-bomb – even more than us Scots!

There were, admittedly, times where the story-lines seemed to get away from the creators. A few threads did appear to be ended, rather than properly resolved. But considering the 70+ hours of television the show represented, such misfires proved remarkably few. The writers definitely had a talent for juggling multiple plot threads and keeping them all moving forward simultaneously. In the end though, it was the actresses (and actors) who made this show what it was, and which kept us coming back for the best part of a decade. If not our favourite show ever on Netflix, it’s definitely up there with the very best.

Creators: Lara Radulovich and David Hannam
Star: Danielle Cormack, Pamela Rabe, Kate Atkinson, Katrina Milosevic